It is only since Father has been ill that I seem to have even any curiosity about them.

But now, they grow and grow on me to quite an absorbing degree.

I wonder if it is that the collector's blood which I have in my veins is beginning to manifest itself.

If so, the strange thing is that I have not felt the call of it before.

Of course I know most of the big things, and have examined them more or less; but really, in a sort of way I have always taken them for granted, as though they had always been there.